raid backup

[Lewis Watson]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Vasenin Alexander aka BlackSir" <blacksir at number.ru>
To: "Erik @ Microcontroller.nl" <erik at microcontroller.nl>;
<freebsd-isp at freebsd.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2004 9:02 AM
Subject: RE: raid backup


> Yes, it works and do what it intended to do - under Widows of course.
But "Promise Fasttrak-33, -66, -100, -100
> TX2/TX4, -133
> TX2/TX2000" is not a RAID controllers, it's ATA/33,66,etc... controllers
with software that can emulate RAID.
> Vasenin Alexander aka BlackSir


I respectfully disagree....

I have been using Promise TX2000's with two drives / computer as RAID 0
with FreeBSD 4.x for over two years in multiple machines. The only
"software" it uses is the Firmware/ BIOS of the TX2000. I have seen
software available for other OS's but none with FreeBSD. FreeBSD only sees
one drive, which would be exactly what you would expect. I have had one
drive go bad, which upon rebooting the TX2000 provided a message stating
as such. It gave the option to  shutdown and replace the bad drive or
continue booting and using the one good drive, which is what I did for
about three days at which time was more suitable to replace the failed
drive.

The software available for the OS's does not emulate RAID, it merely
provides communication from the TX2000 RAID Card to the admin. This
software is not available for FreeBSD AFAIK which is why I had no idea
that the drive had went bad until I rebooted. So, while the software is
helpful for knowing if you are losing a drive, the TX2000 will function
fine without it.

It has been the experience here that the TX2000 is a fine ATA RAID card.
GL.
Lewis



.